Create a recovery partition to automatically recover...

[Jordy-Gaz]

Hi - i am just working on creating a recovery partition for a laptop which i want to automatically image upon a key press from the end user -
i'm using clonezilla and i have created the following partitions,
system reserved (100mb)
local disc (200gb) windows 7
recovery (10gb) clonezilla installed
image (22gb) image from clonezilla is on here
i have used easybcd to create another boot option called "recovery" which boots into the recovery partition to start the clonezilla program.
basically i have copied clonezilla onto the recovery partition which runs - but i'm struggling to get the image to automatically set off
any help will be great!

[Steve21]

So where are you currently, You can boot into clonezilla but it's just not automatically restoring?

aka, Press "recovery", restore happens?


Short version (ha short :P) Is you need the create your own preseeding options. That auto config the options asked by the installer (Like a WDS sysprep file).

http://clonezilla.org/fine-print-liv...mfs-manual.doc

Basically choose all the options you want, and load the script as the menu options. Instead of loading into the main program

(Example from the site)

MENU DEFAULT
# MENU HIDE
MENU LABEL Clonezilla live (Default settings, VGA 800x600)
# MENU PASSWD
kernel /live/vmlinuz
append initrd=/live/initrd.img boot=live config noswap nolocales edd=on nomodeset noprompt ocs_prerun="mount /dev/sda4 /mnt" ocs_prerun1="mount --bind /mnt/Backup /home/partimag/ ocs_live_run="ocs-sr -g auto -e1 auto -e2 -c -r -j2 -k -p true restoreparts ask_user sda1" ocs_live_extra_param="" ocs_live_keymap="NONE" ocs_live_batch="no" ocs_lang="en_US.UTF-8" vga=788 ip=frommedia nosplash
TEXT HELP
* Clonezilla live version: 1.2.4-40-i686. (C) 2003-2010, NCHC, Taiwan
* Disclaimer: Clonezilla comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
ENDTEXT

EOF
echo "RESTORE PC2" >&2
cat << EOF
menuentry "RESTORE PC2" {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod fat
    set root='(hd0,msdos5)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 140c-3521
    loopback loop /ubuntu/iso/clonezilla-live-20110113-maverick.iso
    set root=(loop)
    linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live live-config union=aufs nolocales noprompt gfxpayload=800x600x16 
    ip=frommedia nosplash toram=filesystem.squashfa ocs_live_run="ocs-live-restore" ocs_live_extra_param="-g en_US.UFT-8 -t -k NONE -g auto -e1 auto -e2  -b -c restoreparts serge-image sda1" 
    initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}
EOF

Short version hey Shout if you need more details,

Steve

[Jordy-Gaz]

thanks for that Steve - i've basically got what you put into the first code box. only difference being is mine doesn't say "mount --bind /mnt/backup /home/partimag" mine is just "mount --bind /mnt /home/partimag" could that be the difference ...
also i was just wondering where that should be edited - i've edited the menu.lst file in the NST folder on C:\.... its the only place it appeared to work
Thanks again for the reply...
Jordy

[Arthur]

Another option you may want to look at is the Windows 7 OEM Recovery Partition Tools Creator...

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thr...s-creator-Free

[Jordy-Gaz]

thanks Arthur - i did look at that - but i dont think it allows recovery from an image does it?... have you used it?...
Thanks again
jordy

[netadmin]

You might also look at Comodo Time Machine (Data Recovery with Comodo Time Machine | Comodo) or EAZFix (EAZ-FIX Professional). I've used EAZ Fix on several of our laptops for simple recovery. It's worked well so far. I'm not sure exactly how much of the image restore process can be automated on either EAZ Fix or Comodo Time Machine, but you might want to look at these if you have not already.

[Arthur]

I don't think it allows recovery from an image does it

It does. The WIM image is created after sysprep'ing the computer and is stored on the hidden recovery partition on the local HDD (R:\). I haven't used it yet, but I would like to.

Another way of doing the same thing would be to use a combination of Windows PE (from the Windows AIK) and a script which runs DiskPart + ImageX to restore your Windows 7 image (created using ImageX) via either the StartNet.cmd or winpeshl.ini files in WinPE. There are several guides on how to do this on the MSFN and Reboot.pro forums. Dell uses this method for their restore partitions too.

There are several benefits to using WIM images: 1) because they are file-based you can add/remove files, registry settings, hotfixes and drivers (among other things) without having to recreate the image from scratch; 2) restoring the image over the top of an existing installation of Windows won't wipe out data that doesn't exist in the image...

WIMs are file-and folder-based, and deploy in a mostly non-destructive manner. When you deploy a sector-based image to a hard disk, you destroy whatever partitions sit on that disk; re-imaging a system with Ghost means wiping out the drive. However, when deploying a WIM to a system it means only overwriting whatever files are in the WIM, and no others. As an example, if you had a Windows XP workstation whose hard disk contained a folder named "c:\saveddocs" which held hundreds of documents and you then re-apply the original image to that computer, then you would have a clean copy of the operating system because you overwrote the old one, but the c:\saveddocs folder would still exist in its untouched state. (Source)